Weatherman

Didn't somebody on this forum start to catalog his opinion of EVERY SINGLE RUSH SONG? With a long entry for each one?

O: Freewill Vocal melody doubling the bass melody in alternating 6/8 and 7/8 time sig. Completely spastic flurry of 16th notes in the solo. Blech. U: Lock and Key Probably their catchiest chorus, and really interesting instrumentation (for them). It should've been a bigger hit. About the song, Neil said, "[i play] a solo while Geddy and Alex keep time behind me. That's fantastic, a beautiful exchange of roles: a drum solo in the terms of a guitar solo, where the rest of the band supports, Geddy and Alex playing the actual rhythmic pulse. It allows us to try out a new suit, to take on a new interrelationship between us." http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/transcripts/19880800rhythm.htm

Should we make a list?

It's funny -- musical power trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Either one dies, or they split up for better gigs, or sometimes they add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too. Don't forget Budgie! And ZZ Top! Right! Good catch. My third favorite power trio! And I never got to see them play live... My second favorite is John Mayer Trio, but they barely play together, which supports my theory about trios. My favorite trio were these three smart guys from Toronto. Can't remember their group name. ;-) I just remembered that Green Day now tours with additional musicians, so they can't be called a trio anymore, not live.

Well, it looks like Sue Saad lasted 6 more years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Saad_and_the_Next

Definitely YYZ. The opening "ding-dingdingdingdingding" sounds just like Beaker.

This. Same reason why he loved writing books so much too. He basically loved designing things in private. Not improvising, not "swinging", not "finding the pocket" onstage for a killer groove with Ged. Just composing his ideas in private. That's all he really wanted to do.

...and when he learnt to 'swing' through the Freddy Gruber thing his drumming and Rush's music suffered. Yeah, isn't there a story when they all reconvened after his lessons and tried to play together (maybe in the TFE sessions) but couldn't? Alex said, "I don't know what you're doing anymore," or something like that. Personal note: I'm a novelist and writer, and sometimes the reviews of my books will directly contradict one another. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: literally "This book moved too slow" vs "This book moved too fast". In short, there is no satisfying everybody, so might as well just satisfy yourself, then see who likes it. Which is EXACTLY how Rush did it.

Complaining that Neil lacked swing is like finishing a brilliant mystery novel and complaining it lacked romance. An artist cannot be all things to all people.

It's funny -- musical trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Usually they break up, or sometimes add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too. You missed the longest lasting trio of all, ZZ Top. Formed in 1969 and the original 3 guys lasted together until the death of Dusty Hill this year. And now it's most likely Zebra. Same 3 guys since 75. Next I think would be U2. U2 is a quartet.

It's funny -- musical power trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Either one dies, or they split up for better gigs, or sometimes they add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too.

Dunno, but the BEST opener was definitely Eric Johnson on the RTB tour. I paid full money to see him play three more times in the years that followed.

Well, it IS an "overture". The guys were halfway into classical territory when they named it.

Impossible to see how Alex would've played the backwards solo on Chain Lightning live. Even more impossible is the idea of 2010s-era Geddy hitting those high notes in Available Light.

I heard that album too. It's called 2113, and it features a naked man hiding in dark cave on a planet in the far recesses of the Solar Federation. He's burning a guitar to stay warm. Then the priests of the temple of syrinx land in a spaceship, cuff him, and escort him to prison. After many years in solitary confinement, he dies. But he kept his individuality, so it was all worth it, you know? ;-)

SO MANY 40th anniversaries. We're only on ESL, folks. Just wait for Signals 40th... I hope they do something huge with it. BTW despite being a huge Rushhead I've never seen the ESL video. I'm waiting, so that I have something to look forward to...

It's my favorite of all their live recordings. This is when they sounded their best. Who was Andrew?

You can hear the grunge influence on them post RTB. My theory: After Nirvana exploded, Alex didn't want to be the last guitarist left at the lunch table still using single-coil. He went too far the other way, and that my children is how the beer coaster known as the Vapor Trails CD came to be made.

The stuff that was recorded poorly (RTB, VT) was corrected live, so those are probably the most rewarding live recordings. Otherwise, studio > live, mostly because they were such perfectionists in the studio. Notice that they almost never reworked any of their studio arrangements. They saw themselves primarily as a compositional band, I would imagine.

P/G live concert, the Fear Trilogy Thank you, YouTube.

If anyone cares, I wrote this breakdown on a different thread, in my very first post here: 1) Finding Their Way/Beginnings (debut to COS) 2) High Prog (you know the albums) 3) AOR Success (PW to Signals) 4) High Synth (GUP to HYF) 5) Refinding Their Balls (Presto to TFE) [Peart break] 6) Heavy Old Man Rock (last three) "Refinding their balls" refers to lack of synths and especially Alex's ripping tone throughout Counterparts. Hard to pick favorites, but I rarely listen to 1 and 6, if that says anything.

I agree on these pronunciations. "A great mind thinks alike!" But seriously, one can't help but feel sorry for those learning English from a non-native starting point. The British Isles was a place where all of its inhabitants, and their neighboring lands, met to create one heck of an amalgamation: Old Norse, Latin, Brittonic, Old French . . . the list goes on and on. English is a bunch of languages standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trenchcoat.

English is weird. Apricot. Tomato. Aunt. Peart. Nobody agrees on these pronunciations.

His voice was best from HYF thru the R30 tour.

This is actually something I wonder all the time and would love to ask. Once they come up with a synth patch for a sound they like, how do they go about archiving it and recreating it later? Like you said, I would expect for the old analog synths they would write down all the patch settings somewhere and keep it in a vault (later digital stuff could exported to floppy/computers). But I wonder in reality if they take it that far. Maybe just knowing what synth made the sound, they just shoot for 'close enough' later if needed. Seems hard to believe though, especially since some of the digital stuff (like PPG Wave programs) can be so tough to make again from scratch. I'm obviously a big nerd about getting the historical record down for synthy stuff, I'd love to know more details on this process. Maybe we should start a petition to get a synth chapter in his memoir? ;) PS - One thing this reminds me of is when I was emailing the guy who played the synths on the Twin Peaks TV show soundtrack. I was surprised that he didn't still have the original Emulator II file for the guitar sample he used to make that great bass guitar sound in the intro (he only had it in a newer format, with the pitch shift and tremolo already applied). I get that he probably never uses his Emulator II anymore. But I would still think once you made a hit with something like that, you would immediately back it up in multiple places and keep it safe forever. I know that guy Jon Carin found himself becoming a synth archivist for the members of Pink Floyd and The Who. He stores all their old sounds and performs on stage with the groups. It's actually a genius way to continue getting work at that level. "Hire me for the next tour, or you'll never hear the beginning of Baba O Riley again."